Herman Melville published Moby-Dick in 1851 to devastating reviews and dismal sales. He spent his remaining forty years working as a customs inspector on the New York docks, writing poetry nobody read, and dying in such obscurity that his New York Times obituary misspelled his name. The novel now considered the greatest work of American fiction was out of print for decades before a 1920s revival rescued Melville from oblivion.
This episode traces Melville from his early sea adventures through the triumph of his early novels, the catastrophic failure of Moby-Dick, the forty years of obscurity, and the posthumous resurrection that took seventy years to complete.
Melville's whaling voyages and the early adventure novels that made him a popular success
The writing of Moby-Dick, the influence of Hawthorne, and the commercial disaster of its publication
Forty years as a customs inspector and the poetry and Billy Budd written in near-total obscurity
The 1920s rediscovery that transformed a forgotten customs clerk into America's greatest novelist
Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör
pplpod. Innehållet i podden är skapat av pplpod och inte av,
eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.
